The Amazing World Of Gumball – “The Kids / The Fan” Recap

The boys are distraught when they learn that their voices no longer sound quite right. / Sarah, one of the newer students in school, tries to force her way into Darwin and Gumball’s world.

This season of The Amazing World Of Gumball brings about many changes: changes to the production crew with new writers, and changes to the cast with new voice actors. A show can have the strength to persevere in spite of these changes, but rarely do shows find improvement because of them. Gumball just might have found that improvement, though. I really like what I saw out of these two episodes and I’m curious to see how the rest of the season will turn out. I will miss Logan Grove and Kwesi Boakye, but Jacob Hopkins and Terrell Ransom Jr. did an admirable job and I am looking forward to hearing what they do with the characters as they become more familiar with them. I also have faith that the new writers will be able to bring a fresh direction into the show, while still keeping it what we know and love. Some of them are already familiar with it since they’ve worked on it in other capacities.

“The Kids” was a nice sendoff to Logan and Kwesi. A part of me wishes that more of the episode would have allowed us to hear them speak as they would speak, as much of the episode was filled with intentional pitch distortions to show their changing voices, but the long song that they sung was a nice way to say goodbye. The animation for the sequence provided by CRCR was very well done. The episode had many other memorable moments, with the joke about the dwarf/gnome bus being one of the funniest things that I have ever seen in the show. It was simply brilliant. The Taken joke was also very well done and it was a good call to have it cut short the second time, before it could lose its funniness.

“The Fan” was the better episode as it was more conventional. It further justified the addition of Sarah as a new character, as she didn’t do a whole lot in season two. She was a bit obsesssive with the boys back then, but here, she’s completely lost in her obsessions. I have a soft spot for the crazy stalker trope, and while there are legions of people on tumblr who would call this episode misogynistic, I thought it turned out great and I’m looking forward to seeing Sarah continue to creep out the boys in the future. I suppose the fact that there are real “Sarahs” all over the web who want to marry Darwin and Gumball, or even side-characters like Juke, made the playful jab all the more potent. Fans aren’t always right. I know that now, more than when I wrote my recap for “The Finale”. But I am grateful that Ben Bocquelet and the rest of the people who work on the show care about the fans, even if we tend to lose track of what really matters.